


conundrum

by indiefilms



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dialogue Heavy, Heavy Angst, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29973981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indiefilms/pseuds/indiefilms
Summary: I didn't want a world without pain. I wanted a world where nothing can give you despair, yet I brought it to you in ways I can never forgive myself for.never teach a boy how to kiss. you might not be the one deserving of his saccharine flavor.
Relationships: Kageyama Tobio/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35
Collections: Anu2020





	conundrum

**Author's Note:**

> [kageyama tobio](https://open.spotify.com/track/7lBpCteEdS5WbOnzbVmWiR?si=7d6d54e79bd04a73)  
>  [oikawa tooru](https://open.spotify.com/track/0De8H4o9xzPtjRp9dns0L5?si=46a34d43303240ff)
> 
> cw mention of blood in I LOVE YOU BUT I’M SICK OF THE BLOOD IN MY MOUTH WHEN I SAY IT. there's also slight gory descriptions, though not very explicit. tell me if it is and i'll change the warning. also brief mentions of food

**I CAN NEVER WIN AGAINST YOU BUT YOU ARE STILL MY GREATEST VICTORY.**

The dark loomed earlier than usual. A black veil covered half of the world and there was no natural light to see anything. Phone calls were often cut short to cease the possibility of an argument, or so should it. Kageyama never liked the idea of abandonment. Sometimes ignorance was better. No indication of temporary interest, nothing to begin with.

Oikawa sounded like the devil in the call, flames of hell passing through the line. But he wasn’t a devil, he only had the resonance of one. And in that case, Kageyama compared him to Lucifer — beauty, will and power. However, in glory came its inevitable downfall. A king who led the strongest men in the war and went home defeated. The strongest contender but the one who lost his sword in the battlefield.

In Italy, everything is a dream and a nightmare. In Rome, there is good and evil. In Kageyama’s apartment complex, there are rooms of lovers, of families, of friends, of people who are either in between or out of the spectrum. In his apartment unit, there is a young man with aspirations, born god among men, born weakling among the powerfuls. He’s his own contradiction, desiring to be the lover of his mortal enemy.

“Shoyou’s going to Brazil soon, Tobio-chan,” he changes the subject. “I will leave soon, too.”

“You won’t wait for me?”

“I never did.”

**IT’S HARDER TO LET GO IF YOU’VE NEVER EVEN HELD HIM IN THE FIRST PLACE.** ****

Losing Kageyama was like being eighteen again, being dumb and selfish and insecure. It was either seeing himself free from what he was so afraid of but also putting himself in the place of someone who could never let go of a memory that should’ve at least stayed longer for as old as it could be.

He was a loser before a victor, but he found the true definition of defeat when he lost someone who always found himself in him. Chances were given to him, opportunities, choices. When was the last time he even took one? One that actually benefited him? One that wasn’t selfish, that wasn't temporary, that wasn’t to satisfy his ego?

On the particular day of his departure, Iwaizumi was there. He had his own suitcase with him. His eyes sparkled in connection to the hunger that set his desire ablaze. Iwaizumi was brazen with courage, that if he went closer to the heat, he’d burn the sun. Smiles, grins and chuckles. Oikawa had a best friend whose confidence was a pillar of bright light and everlasting hope.

“Are you okay?” Asked Iwaizumi before he let Oikawa go. “You don’t seem excited as you proposed to be.”

“I am, Iwa-chan! I’m just thinking!”

“Of what? Or,” he wriggled his eyebrows, “of who?”

“No one. Shut the fuck up,” Oikawa snapped. “I’ll see you around, Iwa-chan. Don’t forget your sunscreen.”

Maybe it’s Oikawa who forgot to bring his sunscreen. Whenever he goes out there’s always a profound excuse as to why his skin tends to sink in the basking glow of golden rays. Kageyama used to bring sunscreen for him, SPF 25 even, and the brand he brought was expensive. _I’m just forgetful, Silvestre!_ ; that he will say, but if Silvestre secretly calls Iwaizumi, it’s always, _someone from home used to bring sunscreen for him and he was attuned to it._

Oikawa buys his first sunscreen, courtesy of Shoyou who was able to ask Kageyama what brand he always bought. A Japanese mart had it. SPF 30 only, though, so a random thought says, _if it’s not you, then I don’t want it._

**A KISS IS BITTER WHEN IT STAYED LONGER THAN THE PERSON EVER DID.**

Kissing Oikawa felt like hiking up a mountain of harbored feelings. It took two years of topographical separation to mend them back together, on an accidental trip to Brazil to visit Shoyou. The latter hadn’t said to both of them that the other was coming too, a well-known strategy which could, in some ways, cause more trouble.

At first glance, the problem wasn’t something big, per se. It grew as time passed. The conflict started as an unintentional makeout in Shoyou’s bathroom during a half-tipsy night, then ended as complicated emotions piled into burning coal. Oftentimes they were heartless kisses. Harsh smacks of chapped lips; _biting, biting, biting._ Monsters weren’t delicate after all.

Was this all he was meant for in life? A monster-kisser? Loving for two people? There was a time when Kageyama hugged his knees and cried, body melting into the tiles of his bathroom floor. _HE DOESN’T LOVE ME, HE DOESN’T LOVE ME, HE DOESN’T LOVE ME—_

_I’M JUST A WASHING MACHINE OF HIS DIRTY CLOTHES SO THAT I’LL KISS HIM CLEAN._

_DID HE EVER LOVE ME? DO MONSTERS KNOW HOW TO FEEL?_

So the homoeroticism of kissing starts to die down once the tension runs cold. Kageyama knows how to numb his tongue and cure the bite marks that stain his lips and his neck purple. Oikawa is nowhere to be found, probably back in Argentina where his heart truly belongs. Too bad that he’s so much of a masterpiece, a magnum opus with the biggest flaw right before the spectator’s eyes. A veneer of beauty that cries at night like Dorian Gray.

He’s _like_ Dorian Gray, the man who sold his soul in exchange for the elegance of youth.

But in this case, he sold his soul to be better, only for it to become his greatest enemy.

If Kageyama ever so often pretends to be his own contradiction, then what more of the king this little prince looked up to?

**I LOVE YOU BUT I’M SICK OF TASTING THE BLOOD IN MY MOUTH WHEN I SAY IT.**

The fear of love is the fear of adventure. The fear that desire can consume you whole like a banquet of human flesh. It’s the kind of terror that you can’t battle — leaves you unarmed, paralyzed, and vulnerable. It strips you off the many layers of metallic confidence with so much force it can rip off your skin, too.

“Hey,” if you were Oikawa, you’d have a soft voice sprinkled with blooming regret. “Tobio-chan—”

“I appreciate that it’s a decade-long habit, but stop calling me that, Oikawa-san. I’m not special enough for you to give me a distinction.” If you were Kageyama, you’d have slick gunmetal rapidly moving in your tongue in the speed that it can explode words out of your lips.

Oikawa (do you want to be him?) swallows a rock of his anxiety down his narrow throat. “Okay, Kageyama.”

“Why are you back here,” deadpan sounds like a drop of vibration, “here, in Rome?”

“For you.”

“Bullshit.” Bullseye with the bullet.

Kageyama chuckles, and moves away. “Unlike you, I can’t powder my words into sweet nothings.” Can you do that? Can you play in a game of sinister voices? Can your tongue handle the taste of copper-molded bullets? He can, out of an unavoidable experience. “Unlike you, I know when to say I don’t feel the same thing—”

“Let me explain.” When Kageyama’s breath clogs his exclamation, he takes every millisecond to form a wobbly verbalization of his excuse. “I-I, I loved you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for treating you like a ragdoll I could play with. I’m sorry if I never told you the truth. I’m sorry for letting my mind come in the place of my heart. And if you’ll let me, I want us to try this properly—”

_SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP_

“You had the time to do that!” Sometimes apartment walls aren’t thick enough to cover the voices. “So why didn’t you!?” As someone who wasn’t born to be a word-weaver, Kageyama uses his hands. Both are flying in the air like planes propelling right to the propagation of the bad winds. “Why— urgh!” He groans. It’s hard to speak. He can’t even hear anything.

“I’m fine where I am now,” finally, his thoughts conclude here. “Don’t… try anymore.”

**WHERE IS THE BEAUTY OF YOUTH WHEN MY CHILDHOOD MEMORIES ARE ONLY YOU?** ****

Kageyama learned how to love in a manner where he didn’t even know he was doing it already. Oikawa loved to the point of destruction. He was at the precipice of his doom when Kageyama pulled him back.

They were thirteen and fifteen when they first met, summer of whatever the fuck that years, just a year before they both met Shoyou. Abandoned by his parents, Kageyama knew nothing of love or how it worked or when it could begin. Miwa said it was a chemical reaction, too textbook for his peculiar mind to take in.

Miwa kissed a girl. Kageyama saw it with his own eyes. On his way to school, he asked Oikawa if he could teach him how to kiss.

Oikawa’s first kiss was Iwaizumi. Accidentally. That was also the time he confessed and got rejected in the nicest way possible.

“This is how you kiss.” Two boys are perched on top of the balustrade of a porch. “You hold their cheek opposite to the one they’re holding on you.” Oikawa cups his right, Kageyama cups his left. “Pull closer.” Nose are touching. They have volcanoes for stomachs. “And then this,” the older whispers, closing the distance of their lips.

No one told him to taste lips when kissing, but Kageyama did.

Honeysuckle. Grapes. Strawberry.

Stupid fucking Hot Flaming Cheetos.

As they pull away, there’s a heavenly glow on his little face that brings nothing but a hell of emotions to Oikawa. This, he thinks, is much more than what he prayed for. This, Kageyama ponders, is something he can look forward to.

**YOU WANT AN ENDING? I’LL GIVE YOU AN ENDING.**

He lost him.

All aspects of him; nothing left to grasp, nothing left in the card slots of his worn-out wallet.

**Author's Note:**

> spin-off of osaka's real side story. this is non-linear so the events are arranged in a very messy order. written this during exams. and instead of studying. sorry oikage nation.
> 
> conundrum means "something one can't understand or it's difficult to understand", which is the motif of this fic. this wasn't beta-read so i apologize for any mistakes or whatsoever.


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